Books, Ideas, and Literary Culture for Women in Military Life

what does a shooting range on the Mexican border look like?

Apparently, judging by the repeat image of the guy on the paper targets, the US military’s worst fear is an army of Peter Sarsgaards making their way across the Mexican border on stick-legs. He has strangely rubbery arms and is shooting from the hip, Deadwood-style. (you can click on an image to enlarge)

My husband, unlike a lot of guys, can still smile while holding a rifle. Maybe it’s the hat. It might be impossible to look too cold-hearted in that hat. It sort of says “friendly neighborhood postman, but he’s got his eye on you.”

He was a little unsettled when I piped up, “Ooh, you were shooting M-4s, not M-16s.” He said, “How did you know that? Where is the sweet girl I married?” Well, for one thing, they are lighter and shorter than M-16s. And also, he married a fiction writer. We are obsessive takers of mental notes. But I guess I can see why he finds it almost creepy. As my friend and former classmate Suzanne Rivecca once wrote in an essay, “For a certain type of man, there’s only one thing more discomfiting than a woman who notices everything, and that’s a woman who writes it down.” Luckily, my husband can take it. And I can take him in that hat.* So it’s a fair trade.

I always do a double-take when I see other branches’ uniforms, too. Your own branch’s “look” gets so ingrained in you that other uniforms can only seem kind of odd. It’s almost like we’re biologically wired to respond to our own tribe or something (is this getting a little too analytical?).